Well, well, well, if it isn’t some unexpected king cake drama from Cajun Country! There’s a lot going on in this review and not much I can say to prepare you, although if you think this is an accidental repeat or duplicate review, it isn’t. Today, we are reviewing the Meche’s Donuts king cake from New Iberia, Louisiana.

Last week, I received a text message from my friend who had returned home for a Mardi Gras ball and told me she was going to bring me back a king cake. She also told me that the king cake “certainly [was] not worthy of a review” but that there was “something comforting about it” and that she thought I would enjoy it. Let’s just take a moment to appreciate people who buy king cakes for other people at all, but especially those who buy entire cakes for their friends without the expectation that I’m going to write down my favorite things about them and put it on the internet. All king cakes get reviewed around here.

When my friend brought this cake to my home and placed it on my counter, my initial reaction was a tinge of disappointment—I had already eaten and reviewed this king cake! I don’t know if she sensed my reaction or knew it was coming, but she quickly explained that this was a different Meche’s from the Meche’s Donut King king cake that I had previously reviewed. I can’t remember which exact words she used, but I seem to remember the word “stolen” was used at some point.

When I brought this to the office, I sent a mass email announcing the arrival of the cake. I perhaps used the following borderline inflammatory language:

“It has come to my attention that the Lafayette Meche’s Donut King cake that I brought week before last was actually a rip off of the Meche’s Donuts king cake from New Iberia.”

It didn’t take long for one of my colleagues, who has asked that I not reveal her identity due to potential concerns about her safety, to inform me that I had just “stumbled into Acadiana’s Randazzo-level sugar-based family drama.” Side note: she didn’t ask me to do this, but she did suggest it might be funnier to have an anonymous “Vermillion Parish tipster,” and I agreed. Anyway, my “anonymous” source and I either have very similar writing styles, or she has been reading these, or some combination of both. She continued: “Better add an ‘allegedly’ in there or you gonna have some people mad mad.” Hmmmm… a new twist on what I thought I knew about something I previously knew nothing about!

I promised myself I would do some further research on this before writing this review, and the time has come, readers. The internet and investigative journalism are undefeated, and using my stellar research skills, it took me less than five minutes to find an extremely in-depth 2015 article from Lafayette’s newspaper, The Daily Advertiser, on the Meche family donut drama. I considered posting the link here, but I’m not going to do that. So if you are so inclined, just google “Meche’s Sticky Legacy” and I’m pretty sure you will find what you’re looking for. This article is absolutely bonkers and details the family drama in stunning detail. Seriously, as I scrolled through the article, I kept thinking it was over but it just. Kept. Going. And it is SO salacious! There are a number of quotes in this article and I have to wonder whether the quoted party has regrets about them. Yes, it really is that wild.

Anyway, I guess you want to hear about the king cake now, which is fair. I’m going to provide an objective review and then impart some probably obvious yet rarely acknowledged king cake wisdom on y’all, since I’ve recently declared myself an authority on this.

I don’t really love to pit cakes against each other, but since we did it with the Randazzo family, we may as well do with the Meche family, as well. It is for that reason that I will use the Meche’s Donut King (MDK) king cake as a point of reference here. And, readers, they were similar, but I am confident that I could distinguish them in a blind taste test in a heart beat.

First, this was the traditional king cake, so there was no filling. You may recall that the filling(s) in the MDK king cake was my favorite part. I am tempted to dock an entire point from Meche’s Donuts cake for that at the outset, but that seems unnecessary. So we will move on.

The icing is totally different. This cake has both a donut glaze and then a white sugar icing drizzle that has been colored purple, green, and gold. I thought this cake made a gorgeous presentation. To be fair, this one had been hand delivered to me and thus didn’t have the travel woes that its compatriot endured in a FedEx Box. The icing was also tasty.

Now to discuss the dough. Once again… it’s a donut, but I preferred this donut. Compared to MDK, I personally found that this cake didn’t smell as “fried”(although it obviously had been fried). What I’m actually saying here is that it didn’t smell like a donut shop, as did the MDK cake. I feel like that might have been an old grease situation on MDK’s part, but who’s to say? Actually, my first real job was in fried food, so, sure, I’m an authority in old grease situations, too. Overall, this cake had a fresher taste with a definite cinnamon flavor, which I definitely missed from the MDK cake. The cinnamon was a really lovely touch that almost made me forget it was a donut.

Now, on to the poetic part. As I mentioned earlier, Kacie said there was something comforting about this cake. Now, I’ve alluded to this several times throughout these posts, but I do feel the need to spell it out here. Some of you know what I’m about to say. What you consider the best king cake is almost definitely one of the following: (1) the king cake from your childhood; (2) the very first or first good king cake you had when you moved to Louisiana; or (3) a king cake that reminds you of a particularly happy or memorable time in your life. There are a lot of emotional and psychological aspects to king cake that relate to family, community, nostalgia, and even grief. Okay, wow, that got serious FAST! I’m not trying to get THAT deep here, but if you know, you know.

I had never had a donut king cake before 2023, so this one didn’t hold much emotional weight for me (other than the fact that I was really, really touched that someone wanted to gift it to me). I also still don’t really love donuts that much. But I really enjoyed this king cake and would give it a definite edge over the MDK king cake, particularly given that there were no fillings. 4 stars, easily, and I’d probably give more stars to a filled version.